A talk given at the ANLTC event on marketing and promotion, organised by ANLTC, April 19th 2016

1. Leabharlann UCD
An Coláiste Ollscoile, Baile Átha
Cliath,
Belfield, Baile Átha Cliath 4
UCD Library
University College Dublin
Belfield, Dublin 4.
Library Newsletters, News Blogs…
Worthwhile or Waste of Time?
Ros Pan
Head of Library Outreach & Communications
www.ucd.ie/library

2. Summary
• A brief account of our Library
newsletter and scrapping that in
favour of a revived Library blog
• A look at the impact of these
channels
• Consideration of the need to bite
the bullet and not perpetuate
unsuccessful promotion and
publicity channels

3. Quick Summary Poster

4. Old Blogs
• We used to have a range of blogs,
range of authors, they were in
blogger
• We scrapped them around 2012
when central outreach team formed
because they were not being read
much and we wanted a more central
control of publicity
• They seemed a bit dated as well as
other social media evolved

5. Putting Effort into our Library Newsletter
• We put effort into developing our
Newsletter, online only
• Decent looking
• Got to a regular 3 issues a year
pattern – produced 8 issues
• Content mix of quick items and
nice double page spreads
• Offered it as pdf and in Issuu
• Promoted it a lot in all channels
included staff and student central
e-zines, social media etc

6. Web page with all copies on it
http://www.ucd.ie/library/news_publicity/newsletters/

7. Assess Newsletter Impact
• Quality Review triggered some
analysis of impact
• Monitored opening of targeted
emails about this – lot never
even read the email
• Put all pdf access via bitly and
got the statistics from Issuu for
the online reading version
• Revealed a low use pattern
• Proposed to LSMT to scrap the
newsletter and agreed to that

8. Assess Newsletter Impact
• Found that each issue achieved
200-400 views
• In the context of 25,000 members
of UCD plus outsiders this is a very
low figure
• Proposed a switch to senior
management team to a trial blog
• Also noted in that context:
• Low reading of our key
achievements summary – 85
views
• Low reading of our website news

9. The New Blog
• Hosted solution in Wordpress free
version
• Very quick and easy to put in
entries
• Aiming to get stuff up quickly
• Cannot replicate nicely laid out
double spread articles
• Getting good bit of content into it
• Attractive
• Link on home page, and drive
traffic to it via news, social media

10. Time issues?
“In spite of such potential gains, the
difficulties attached to maintaining blogs
are frequently highlighted, especially the
“serious time commitment”, the
“pressure” to update information
alongside other existing workloads, and
the need for it to be managed “by
someone who believes in interaction”
(Lee & Bates, 2007, p. 657)

11. ucdlib.wordpress.com

18. Email Newsletter next try?